Performance
The first thing that grabs your attention is the RGB, love it or hate it, it’s a pretty much standard feature for a peripheral these days. While it does default to a dizzy rainbow out of the box, there are some built-in profiles of static colours and other effects. However, I strongly recommend that you download the NZXT CAM software, customise it all to your liking, and save the profiles to the keyboard. This isn’t just about RGB either, as your profiles can contain your switch configurations, macros and more, so it’s worth doing all this at least once.
The typing experience is top-tier, with exceptionally smooth actuation thanks to the premium NZXT Magnetic switches and their pre-lubricated design. There’s no physical contact, so it is consistently smooth to push on the switches, each requiring 30g force, so not the lightest switch to push. However, it strikes a balance between speed and accuracy, making it suitable for both gaming and typing. The magnetic actuation provides a unique, almost “floaty” feel, while the lack of physical contact ensures durability and longevity. They’re also fantastically quiet, and the keycaps don’t bottom out on the chassis of the keyboard, so instead of a click or clack, you get that warm-sounding “THUNK” like tapping your fingertips on a quality piece of hardwood furniture.
But this is where the keyboard gets more interesting, as it has a programmable actuation point. With 40 levels of adjustment, you can configure the keyboard to register a stroke of a key when it’s only been pushed down a tiny bit. Why? Well, it’s only 4mm of travel, but if you can have the switch trigger at the minimum of 0.6mm, you’re shaving milliseconds off of your action time. Combine that with an 8000Hz polling rate, the keyboard is checking for an input every 0.125ms rather than every 1ms (with a 1000Hz polling rate). This is even further enhanced by allowing you to customise the deactivation phase of the switch. For example, if you’re strafing with A or D, you can have the switch stop registering movement the instant you release pressure, not when it returns to the top.
Both of these can give you a small advantage, not a lot, but it adds up when you’re playing competitively. A 1-5ms response time gaming monitor was common for many years, and 1000Hz peripherals and older switch types give you 1-5ms input latency. Given that modern gaming monitors such as the latest OLED displays feature a 0.03ms response time, these faster-responding keyboards put things back on par.
What’s even more interesting, is that this is per key. So, you could set your WASD to a 0.6mm actuation, but keep the surrounding keys at the full 4mm. This means you get faster movement response times, but other actions are going to require a full press, meaning you can still use them but are less likely to trigger them by mistake.
The keyboard is gorgeous to type on and sounds pleasing to the ear when you’re mashing away at the keys. But there are only two minor issues I have with it. The first is the keys on the right, it’s a layout I’m not familiar with, so for daily work, I do have to glance at them first to find them, but hey, you’ll get used to it, so hardly a deal breaker.
